Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Bishop

Antoni Claret was born in 1807 at Sallent in Catalonia, the son of a weaver, and worked in the textile trade in Barcelona before he was ordained in 1835. He preached missions throughout Catalonia and the Canary Islands, set up in Barcelona a large publishing house for cheap religious books, and in 1849 founded the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Claretians. From 1850 to 1857 he was archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, where he visited the whole diocese, opposed abuses of slaves and the poor, and in 1856 at Holguín was slashed across the face by an assailant. He was then made confessor to Queen Isabella II in Madrid. He went into exile with the queen in 1868 and died at the monastery of Fontfroide in France on 24 October 1870. He was canonized in 1950.